Rui Manuel Monteiro Lopes Ramos was born in Torres Vedras in 1962. He has a degree in History from Universidade Nova de Lisboa (1985) and a PhD in Political Science from Oxford University (1997).

He is currently a Senior Researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, where he has pursued his research career since 1986, after a brief spell at the Faculty of Letters of Lisbon, where he was a Trainee Assistant Professor in the 1985-1986 academic year. He was also a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of the New University of Lisbon (1998-2001) and then at the Institute of Political Studies of the Portuguese Catholic University (since 2001).

At the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, he was a member of the Standing Committee of the Scientific Council (2001-2004), a member of the Postgraduate Committee (1998-2000) and a member of the editorial board of the journal Análise Social (2003-2004).

As a historian, he has specialized in the history of Portugal in the 19th and 20th centuries, studying mainly political and cultural aspects. He has dedicated himself in particular to researching the period at the end of the constitutional monarchy and the First Republic. He is also interested in the history of political ideas in 19th and 20th century Europe, a subject on which he has given several seminars at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, as part of the MA and PhD programs in Comparative Politics.

He is the author of dozens of articles published in Portuguese and foreign scientific journals, and several books, including A Segunda Fundação, volume VI of the History of Portugal directed by José Mattoso (1994), João Franco e o Fracasso do Reformismo Liberal (2001), and Biografia D. Carlos, in the series of Kings of Portugal (2006). Carlos, in the Kings of Portugal series (2006). He was also one of the coordinators of the three-volume work Dicionário Biográfico Parlamentar. The Constitutional Monarchy (2004-2005). He is currently working on the international project El Léxico Político y Social de la Modernidad Iberoamericana [Iberconceptos Project], which brings together researchers from dozens of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American universities to produce a Dictionary of the History of Political and Social Concepts in the Ibero-American World between 1750 and 1870.

He was one of the founders and a member of the editorial board of the journal Penélope. Revista de História e Ciências Sociais (1988-2006) and one of the organizers of the two congresses on the Social History of Elites (1991 and 2003).

In October 2002, the Academia Europaea awarded him the distinction of Burgen Scholar "in recognition of excellent academic achievement".

In addition to his university work and historical research, he has been writing a weekly current affairs column in the daily newspaper Público since 2006, and collaborated on the monthly magazine Atlântico between 2005 and 2008. He was also the author of the 12-part television series "O Portugal de...", which aired on RTP-1 in 2007.